A Dissonance of Discourses

Literary Theory, Ideology, and Translation in Mo Yan and Chinese Literary Studies

Bibliographic Data

ID8909645
AuthorsLucas Klein (0000-0003-0953-241X, corresponding author)
Year2016
Volume53
Issue1
Pages170-197
Publication date2016-03-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueComparative Literature Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0010-4132 • E-ISSN: 1528-4212
PublisherThe Pennsylvania State University Press (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.5325/complitstudies.53.1.0170
OpenAlexW2308188641
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited12

Mo Yan's 2012 Nobel Prize for Literature quickly turned into the most controversial international literary prize of recent memory. The controversy took place largely in English, and largely on the American Internet, where as much as Mo Yan was honored as being an important literary voice from a country whose contemporary cultural products are often neglected, he was criticized for supporting the Chinese Communist Party and its government. Defenders have pointed out that the politics in his fiction are neither as simple nor as straightforward as his party membership might otherwise indicate, but critics have said he writes a “daft hilarity” in a “diseased language,” calling his works in translation “superior to the original in their aesthetic unity and sureness.” Taking a detailed look at the controversy and debate, I examine the theoretical assumptions and stakes at work in the reading of Mo Yan and his Nobel, with attention to their ideological underpinnings, followed with a discussion on the importance of considering translation and the relationship between literary reading and politics. I close with a look toward a broadly applicable model of internationalist reading I call translational

Aesthetics · Art · Cognitive dissonance · Communism · Epistemology · Ideology · Linguistics · Literary criticism · Literary science · Literary theory · Literary Translation · Literature · Political science · Politics · Reading (process · Simple (philosophy · Sociology · Translation studies · Chinese history and philosophy · History · Japanese History and Culture · Law · Philosophy · Psychoanalysis, Philosophy, and Politics · Psychology · Social Psychology